ALWAYS REFORMING: A sinner saved by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone adhering to Scripture alone to bring about reform personally, for his family, church, and world to the glory of God alone.

Friday, June 03, 2011

Only dogs are to obey.

Obedience is often mocked in our era, but that's a mark against our society, not against the concept or the implication of divinely appointed roles. In addition, the necessity of obedience cannot be in human redemption.

The following from John Murray elucidates the fuller significance of the death of the second person of the trinity, Jesus the Christ, particularly with regard to His obedience to a "sin avenging God" (HT Jay Porterfield).

What the obedience of Christ involved for him is perhaps nowhere more strikingly expressed than in Hebrews 2:10-18; 5:8-10 where we are told that Jesus "learned obedience from the things which he suffered," that he was made perfect through sufferings, and that "being made perfect he became to all who obey him the author of eternal salvation." When we examine these passages the following lessons become apparent.

It was not through mere incarnation that Christ wrought our salvation and secured our redemption.

It was not through mere death that salvation was accomplished.

It was not simply through the death upon the cross that Jesus became the author of salvation.

The death upon the cross, as the climactic requirement of the price of redemption, was discharged as the supreme act of obedience; it was not death resistlessly inflicted but death upon the cross willingly and obediently wrought.

[The above is from Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray. Read the whole chapter: The Nature of the Atonement. Buy the book.]

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.~Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)